An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature flourished for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into several periods: Early Latin literature, The Golden Age, The Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization.
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Sanskrit literature is a broad term for all literature composed in Sanskrit. This includes texts composed in the earliest attested descendant of the Proto-Indo-Aryan language known as Vedic Sanskrit, texts in Classical Sanskrit as well as some mixed and non-standard forms of Sanskrit. Literature in the older language begins during the Vedic period with the composition of the Ṛg·veda between about 1500 and 1000 BCE, followed by other Vedic works right up to the time of the grammarian Pāṇini around 6th or 4th century BCE.
Thai literature is the literature of the Thai people, almost exclusively written in the Thai language. Most of imaginative literary works in Thai, before the 19th century, were composed in poetry. Prose was reserved for historical records, chronicles, and legal documents. Consequently, the poetical forms in the Thai language are both numerous and highly developed. The corpus of Thailand's pre-modern poetic works is large. Thus, although many literary works were lost with the sack of Ayutthaya in 1767, Thailand still possesses a large number of epic poems or long poetic tales —some with original stories and some with stories drawn from foreign sources. There is thus a sharp contrast between the Thai literary tradition and that of other East Asian literary traditions, such as Chinese and Japanese, where long poetic tales are rare and epic poems are almost non-existent. The Thai classical literature exerted a considerable influence on the literature of neighboring countries in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia and Burma.
According to the definition by George L. Hart, a classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large body of ancient written literature.
Ancient Greek literature is literature written in the Ancient Greek language from the earliest texts until the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest surviving works of ancient Greek literature, dating back to the early Archaic period, are the two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, set in an idealized archaic past today identified as having some relation to the Mycenaean era. These two epics, along with the Homeric Hymns and the two poems of Hesiod, the Theogony and Works and Days, constituted the major foundations of the Greek literary tradition that would continue into the Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.
Poetry as an oral art form likely predates written text. The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering oral history, genealogy, and law. Poetry is often closely related to musical traditions, and the earliest poetry exists in the form of hymns, and other types of song such as chants. As such, poetry is often a verbal art. Many of the poems surviving from the ancient world are recorded prayers, or stories about religious subject matter, but they also include historical accounts, instructions for everyday activities, love songs, and fiction.
The Titanomachy is a lost epic poem, which is a part of Greek mythology. It deals with the struggle that Zeus and his siblings, the Olympian Gods, had in overthrowing their father Cronus and his divine generation, the Titans.
Depending on the methods of counting, as many as three hundred versions of the Indian Hindu epic poem, the Ramayana, are known to exist. The oldest version is generally recognized to be the Sanskrit version attributed to the Padma Purana - Acharya Shri Raviṣeṇ Padmapurāṇa Ravisena Acharya, later on sage Narada, the Mula Ramayana. Narada passed on the knowledge to Valmiki, who authored Valmiki Ramayana, the present oldest available version of Ramayana.
In Greek mythology, Uranus, sometimes written Ouranos, is the personification of the sky and one of the Greek primordial deities. According to Hesiod, Uranus was the son and husband of Gaia (Earth), with whom he fathered the first generation of Titans. However, no cult addressed directly to Uranus survived into classical times, and Uranus does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky, and Styx might be joined, however, in solemn invocation in Homeric epic. Uranus is associated with the Roman god Caelus.
Bhaṭṭikāvya is a Sanskrit-language poem dating from the 7th century CE, in the formal genre of the "great poem" (mahākāvya). It focuses on two deeply rooted Sanskrit traditions, the Ramayana and Panini's grammar, while incorporating numerous other traditions, in a rich mix of science and art, poetically retelling the adventures of Rama and a compendium of examples of grammar and rhetoric. As literature, it is often considered to withstand comparison with the best of Sanskrit poetry.
Cambodian literature, also Khmer literature, has a very ancient origin. Like most Southeast Asian national literatures its traditional corpus has two distinct aspects or levels:
Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories concern the ancient Greek religion's view of the origin and nature of the world; the lives and activities of deities, heroes, and mythological creatures; and the origins and significance of the ancient Greeks' cult and ritual practices. Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece, and to better understand the nature of mythmaking itself.
Bo Utas, born May 26, 1938, in Höglunda, a village in Jämtland, Sweden, is a Swedish linguist, Iranologist and chess historian. He is professor emeritus in Iranian languages at Uppsala University, and a scholar on Persian historical linguistics and classical Persian literature.
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